Q.bel Selection

Despite having been around since just last year, Q.bel already has a healthy range of seven products, in the form of wafer bars and wafer rolls. The backstory? After having natural foods at home, their son came home from school wondering why he didn’t have the same snacks as everyone else. Oh, the influence of schools! Taking matters into their own hands, they created Q.bel. The “bel” is for Isabel, the founder’s wife, and the “Q” for quality foods.

When I opened up my box of offerings, I was pleased to find doubles of everything, not even considering what exactly everything was. As I began pawing through them, however, I grew more pleased. These are essentially natural replacements to candy bars. Yet the wrappers are only marked by the pair of words “All Natural.” That is refreshing after all the labels you see nowadays. Besides this, the design is careful not to over-promise: colorful, slightly shiny, it shows we’re looking at something casual here.

What do I tear into first? The Double Dark wafer bar, which uses a 70% chocolate. There are two bars, three wafer layers thick, in each package. My first impression was that the wafer was a little too stiff — maybe because of the different ingredients? It certainly is thicker than a KitKat, anyway. Once I got past this, it really was enjoyable. The chocolate has a bit of a coffee taste and is of good quality.

Next up was the Mint bar, which also uses dark chocolate. The chocolate taste is less here, what with the fresh and light mint, as well as the wafer, diverting your attention. What is more interesting is that the wafer didn’t seem hard this time.

The Cripsy Rice is in both dark and milk chocolate. It seems as if that layer of crisped rice beneath the top layer of chocolate traps more chocolate in. Those are the two differences from the plain ones: a little more chocolaty, a little more texture. The milk version is a bit sweeter and, well, milky than the dark version. I’m impressed that the milk chocolate also is good quality. Not jaw-droppingly, of course, but that isn’t what Q.bel is going for. This wafer really can replace a candy bar: it easily equals the deliciousness.

The last wafer bar is Peanut Butter, also with milk chocolate, and complete with that fatal peanut butter aroma. It’s quite creamy, the taste and texture both, even with the wafer. Really, I don’t know why the wafers seemed to get softer as I went along; I couldn’t have been simply getting used to them since my tasting took place in more than one sitting. Anyway, the peanut butter bars run on the sweet side of peanut butter versus on the salty side, so they may not work as an exact replacement for your candy fix. But if you don’t mind this difference, this wafer is just as pleasant.

The wafer rolls come in bigger packaging, but are actually only 26 grams as compared to 32 in the bars. Each one has a tray of two rolls. They have a lighter crunch and a thinner bite. There seems to be more chocolate in its ratio with the wafer, which means a little more sweetness. These are the only differences with the Crunchy Crispy, milk and dark, wafer rolls from the bars. same with the Peanut Butter — more buttery, more sweet, less entertaining and long-lasting crunching. I like the bars more, but I am partial to wafers, so I like getting more of them. It’s a choice between wafer or flavor dominance.

Q.bel has good values and a very much edible range. Give them a try for those pesky urges for candy and sweets, and I think you’ll agree.

You might also like...